What can be expected from such a people ? What
literature can they have ; or rather, what judgment
could be passed upon it by a visitor so ill-disposed,
and, moreover, ignorant of the language ? To Saint-
Amant, as to so many others before and even after him,
this language is a patois that no one out of the island
will ever speak ; peasants' patois rarely spreads beyond
its village. Any Englishman knows as much : —

" 11 est bien assez niatois
Pour juger que ce patois,
Bourru, vilain ct frivole,
Est un oiscau qui ne vole
Ou'aux environs dc ses toits."

The traveller could not, however, help noticing that
the English had a stage, that they were very proud of
it, that they went in crowds to the play, and that one
author in particular carried all before him. That ;
author was not Shakespeare, of whom Saint-Amant I
says never a word, but Ben Jonson, still alive at
the time of the French poet's visit, and compared
with whom, according to local estimation, Seneca
and Euripides were mere babbling poetasters. The j


Saint-Amant visited the different theatres ; the acting
med to him in harmony with the plays, the climate,

phe food, and everything the country produced.

Actors come in before their turn, they mistake their

^vords, and do not know what to do with their


" Ici l'un trop tot se montre,
Et la, l'autre, rebondi,
D'un contre-temps etourdi,
Heurte l'autre qu'il rencontre ;
L'un disant Goths pour Remains,
Ou les dieux pour les humains,
Rougit comme une ecrevisse,
Et l'autre simple et novice
Ne sait ou mettre ses mains."

What do they play ? Interludes, dumb shows,
nasks with dances. They represent Andromeda,
vlerlin, Arthur and the Round Table. In their
hterludes they dare —